


To Join These Men in Holy Matrimony

by A_Candle_For_Sherlock



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alcoholism, Established Relationship, Grief, Holmes and dogs, Holmes family problems, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mycroft taking care of him too, Queer History, Turkish Baths, Victorian Attitudes, Watson taking care of Holmes, Weddings, he is very loved, holmes' backstory, learning trust, losing a parent, surprisingly this is all pretty historical, the violin as a stand in for actually talking, we really cover a lot of ground here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 19:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12239418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Candle_For_Sherlock/pseuds/A_Candle_For_Sherlock
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is a contradiction, an enigma, a force; at once the most generous spirit and the most self-contained man I have ever known. I've known more of him, I think, than anyone on earth. Yet for years I'd learned nothing about his boyhood, nor his fears, nor his future hopes, nor his father’s name. I never felt it as a lack until I knew he loved me.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rachelindeed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachelindeed/gifts), [daisynorbury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisynorbury/gifts).



> This fic is for rachelindeed and daisynorbury, whose work has given me joy, and whose Holmeses have contributed good things to mine. Thank you for adding your love to this fandom.

Sherlock Holmes is a contradiction, an enigma, a force; at once the most generous spirit and the most self-contained man I have ever known. I've heard heaven and hell in his instrument as he played for me; I have watched him grieve, and struggle, and triumph; I have known him better, I think, than anyone on earth. Yet for years I'd learned nothing about his boyhood, nor his fears, nor his future hopes, nor his father’s name. He seemed to want nothing but the present moment. I had felt his odd immanence as a mystery; a sense almost of faerie magic about him, as though he were a man outside time. I never felt it as a lack until I knew he loved me.

The day the letter came, and the change began, was less than a year into our affair. The whole thing seemed miraculous to me, and yet to anyone’s eye we would have appeared the same as ever. Only behind closed doors, and in the quiet of the night, was everything new. A mizzling fog had crept over the city, rendering the cold grey outdoors inhospitable, the glow of the hearth wholly heart-warming. Holmes and I had already passed several very comfortable hours settled in our chairs before a roaring fire, in the homely half-light of a stormy day, with books and tea and hot buttered toast, when the bell rang. Mrs. Hudson’s voice could be heard answering, and a minute later Billy thundered up (his enthusiasm indicating excessive boredom belowstairs) and rapped sharply at the sitting room door.

“Come in,” said my boy, muzzily, from behind a fragile and enormous map of old Yorkshire, dated 1774, which he was studying for purposes as yet undisclosed but apparently enthralling.

Billy entered, equipped with a sealed envelope and an expression of purpose. Holmes waved a delicate, desultory hand, and the envelope and expression were brought to stand behind his chair.

“Yours, sir.” Billy looked as though he were loath to leave us without knowing the import of the letter, but Holmes took it behind the map and did not emerge.

“Billy,” I said, and held out a handful of coins. We’d had several profitable cases the week before, and the day was dark and drear enough to fray the nerves of any active, healthy boy cooped up indoors. “Run to the corner store for some candy. Get what you like. Bring back toffees for Mrs. Hudson and ribbon candy for Anna.” Anna, bright, curly-headed, fourteen years old, helped in the kitchen three days a week. Billy was entirely smitten: stricken red-faced and silent when she was in the room. He flushed straight up, on cue.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!”

“Wear a muffler!” I shouted after him, as he departed. In his excitement he looked likely to forget even his coat and overshoes. Holmes laughed behind his paper.

“He’ll catch cold,” I said, defensive.

“He’s a great boy of twelve,” said he, “and you’re a mother hen.” He peeked out above the map at last, twinkling; winked at me, and laid it aside, and took up the letter from his lap, and plucked a butter knife from the tea-tray to serve him for a letter opener. “Let’s see what mysterious mess of iniquity we’ve been sent now. I hope it’s worthwhile.” In another moment, however, he had examined the handwriting and the return address, and his expressive face went quite blank.

My beloved is a showman before friends, a professional with strangers, and an enigma even to me. He likes little to show himself startled before he has had time to understand things. So I waited quietly until he had read the letter through twice, and then dropped his lovely head down heavily upon the chair back, to regard the firelight dancing across our low ceiling, with a queer expression. I said, “Is it a case, then?” Clearly it was not. There was every indication that this was personal news, or a private missive, at least, and from someone unexpected. But I had not been made privy to the annals of his past, except in apparently careless remarks regarding old sparring partners and comrades at university. Our friendship was old and rich, but our love affair was new. So I waited to learn how much he wanted me to know.

“No,” he said, “it’s my brother.”

I might have guessed; anything involving family turned him quiet and strange a while. I’d no idea what had become of his parents, or where his family home lay, or how he and Mycroft Holmes could have lived fifteen miles apart for fifteen years, in the same city, and still barely speak, in spite of a deep and abiding affection.

“Was it sent from the Diogenes? Is he all right?”

“What? No.” He lifted his head to look at me, and his expression cleared and sharpened, and became more familiar, if still stunned. “It isn’t Mycroft, it’s Sherrinford. He’s asked us to his wedding.”

I find it difficult to put into words the sensations I experienced at this statement. I hardly knew where I was. For one, here was another brother, again, entirely unknown to me! After all this time! And a brother getting married. My experience of the Holmeses, regardless of the unforeseen and wonderful intimacy of my current situation with Sherlock, was all against the idea of them involving themselves in such a public, conventional, domestic contract as legal matrimony. A Holmes to wed--and we two strange bachelors asked to come together! Setting aside the fact that this Sherrinford knew of my existence, despite my ignorance of his--did he know what we were?

“He’s asked us to his wedding,” I was all I said, breathless.

My only comfort was that Holmes appeared equally beyond speech. After a moment’s hesitation, he held out the letter to me.

The opening addresses were unremarkable; kind, if formal. The substance of the letter was equally straightforward, except for the striking point that the ceremony was to be held at Sherrinford’s club, in Piccadilly, in three days.

“To be followed by dancing,” I murmured, handing back the letter to Holmes. He took it in silence. “What kind of club hosts a wedding?”

“His does, clearly,” he said slowly. His voice was high, soft, and strained, and strangely remote, as though he had gone somewhere inside himself, away from me. I hesitated at the threshold of his secrecy.

“Is he older, or younger?” was the question I settled on, a very small step inside.

“Seven years older than I. Two older than Mycroft.”

“And he lives here?”

“In Islington, I think, but this was sent from the club’s address.” Standing, he reached for his pipe and dug a pile of shag out of the Persian slipper with slightly unsteady fingers; packed it in with slow imprecision. “I suppose I ought to be glad he hasn’t chosen a hotel for the great day.”

Several possible lines of inquiry opened there. But I had to ask first, “Why are you glad of that? And what bride consents to be wed in a gentlemen’s club?”

“Ha!” He turned to me fully at last, with a spark of something in his gaze--not humour; perhaps irony. “The latter explanation contains the former, my dear boy. His bride is called Alfred, and the club represents all the family they own.”

I am accustomed to being struck speechless in his presence. I rather relish it, but this was quite beyond me. “I beg your pardon?”

“My brother,” Holmes repeated slowly, with that same strange hard brightness in his tone, “is marrying a solicitor called Alfred Cox, within the week, under the blessing of a remarkable priest, and in the collective presence of his club, instead of the Holmes-Vernet family party that would have witnessed his union should he have been born quite another man. But he set the precedent in his character which I have followed, and has proven incapable of taking a wife. I had not expected him to bend to tradition, after all these years; but I had not anticipated _this.”_ The bitterness infused in the word was unmistakable. “Happily for him, my parents are no longer in the world to voice their objections, and Mycroft and I will have nothing to add except our well-wishes. I suppose you’ll have to sign the letter of congratulations. Perhaps you could advise me on a gift, as well. Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” for I was staring openly. “Stop looking at me like that! I’m well aware we are not the most respectable of families, but you hardly have the right to be so shocked. I am not the one who corrupted _you.”_

This was quite true, but entirely beside the point, and, “Why didn’t you tell me?” was all I could find to say.

“That my brother is also an inveterate self-debaser? That he cheerfully enjoys the fruits of his moral decay? That he would publicly claim a marriage founded on buggery?”

The words were shockingly harsh, but his expression was lost and wild; and I saw one thing clearly: he had not understood me at all.

“My dear fellow,” I said, and stood to look him in the eye. He blinked before my gaze. His outrage wavered, his eyes fell. I reached out a careful hand, to rest upon his thin shoulder; held him firmly through the soft, worn silk of his rainy-day dressing gown. Sometimes he needed mooring. “Why didn’t you tell me you had another brother? I should have liked to know him sooner.”

After a moment, the fight left him. He drooped into my touch; raised an embarrassed hand to his brow, and sighed, and met my look again, visibly regretful. “Oh,” he said, “oh, well--we’ve not gotten on, and we never speak--the thought hadn’t occurred.”

“It’s all right,” I said, worrying as that statement was. “I’ll meet him now. Or do you mean to send our regrets?”

“You want to attend?”

I had startled him again. I took a step back, and sat down in my chair; looked up at him, leaning now upon the mantel and drawing on his pipe in nervous bursts, studying me. “Of course. It’s your brother’s wedding, Sherlock.”

He blinked and blushed a little at the statement, or at the sound of his name; perhaps both. The use of our first names had taken on a very pleasant weight in both our minds; the circumstances under which we had begun to use “Sherlock” and “John,” within our own four walls, were memorable enough. After a moment, he sank back into his own armchair and began to make use of the pipe more steadily, letting out the smoke in slow and thoughtful streams.

“It is absolutely out of the question,” he said, suddenly, after some minutes of silence. I startled; I had been quite lost in my own thoughts.

“For us to attend?”

“For you.”

“You don’t want me?”

“Don’t be absurd.” He glared at me, through the slight haze of fragrant smoke that was forming round about him. “I always want you. But it isn’t safe.”

“Is he dangerous?” A thrill of sudden anger went through me. “Was he cruel to you?”

“No! That is--no. Of course not. But we are known; we could be seen; we could be arrested, or fall prey to blackmailers or newspapermen. There are a hundred persons who would find a use for the news that you and I were seen arm-in-arm going into a molly-house with a bunch of queers.”

“Good Lord, must you speak so?” This sort of talk was unprecedented from him, and surprisingly painful. “It isn’t really a molly-house, is it?”

His eyes dropped. “No. I’m fairly sure it’s a genuine club.”

“But you aren’t going.”

“Not with you.”

Not again. I leaned forward. “And not without me. It is both, or none, if you can manage to remember that.”

“For God’s sake, John!” He flung himself to his feet, and began to pace. “You know I would never put you in danger without pressing need.”

I had known that, or guessed it, but it was a comfort to be told, all the same. A question occurred. “Will Mycroft go?”

He stood still. Clearly he hadn’t thought of that, which was proof enough of his disarranged mind.  “I don’t know,” he said at last, haltingly. “I don’t--he may. I’ll go see him.”

“All right.” This, at least, I understood enough to approve. “Am I--ought I to stay home?”

“Again, if I must say it,” very sharply, “I always want you.” It was very nearly the same tone he had used to say, “Because I love you,” for the first time; angrily, with his face turned away. I had pressed him to say why he would not kiss me. I was nearly certain I had not misread his wishes. I hadn’t realized he, the all-observant, all-knowing, could so badly misread mine. I had not known he needed to be told I loved him too.

Clearly I was missing something else essential, now. I watched him for a minute in silence, wishing I dared ask the hundred questions occurring to me, but he seemed nearly overcome with warring emotions, turning about the room, biting at the stem of the pipe, unable to be still; until all at once he stopped, with a glance at me to be sure I was all right. I nodded, and his expression cleared a little. He set aside his pipe, and took up the Stradivarius; tuned it, and smoothed the rosin across the bow, once, twice, and began to play--heartbreaking music, unearthly, dangerous, deeply sad; a whole range of communication words could not have reached, and I closed my eyes and tried to understand it.

When at last he put up his instrument, and turned again to me, I expected only a swift, “Good-night.” We spent some part of most nights together, but sleep was a point in which we rarely coincided, talk and other intimacies taking up what sanctuary we found in the safety of his room, or mine. I thought to-night he might want to be alone. But his eyes as he took up a candle, and turned to me, were wide and dark and asking for me, wordlessly, and wordless I followed him.

In the shadows beside his bed, he stripped swiftly, and crept beneath the covers without a glance. I followed suit, helping myself to one of his immense nightshirts. In the silence I blew out the candle, and laid myself down beside him, carefully; laid my hand on his bare chest, to feel his beating heart beneath my palm. My soul felt bruised.

“Sherlock,” I said, into the darkness, “did you mean all those things about moral decay, and self-debasement? Do you think less of us for this?”

After a moment, his hand crept over mine.

“No. I felt ashamed because I thought you might.”

“Why on earth?” I knew I sounded hurt. I was hurt. “As you said, you did not begin this affair. I did. Do you think I respect myself so little? Or do you still believe I am only using you for my own pleasure?”

“No,” he breathed, “no.” Still he wouldn’t look at me. “But if you could have seen your face--you were shocked when I mentioned the wedding. You were.”

“My dear boy,” I said, keeping myself calm with a considerable effort. “I have learned, all in one night, that you have another brother, with a lover of his own, of whom you never speak; and that some men like us marry publicly, before God and man. I am shocked. That does not in any way prove that I consider you and I, and everything we do, anything less than sacred.”

A slow breath, beside me; the hand over mine tightened. “I am sorry,” he said, and then he turned into my shoulder at last, and hid his face in my neck. I drew him in; held him against me, and stroked his back, and kissed his temple, the pulse in his sweet neck, the curve of his slender shoulder. Angry as I was, I knew he loved me. I knew that he was afraid, and that there were things at work that I did not understand.

***

I know he slept, because he was wrapped around his pillow, open-mouthed and dreaming, when I came awake in the early morning, and went into my own room for my things. I settled in the sitting room. Mrs. Hudson brought up our breakfast, and left again; the clock ticked on. I read the newspaper through, and examined the post, and cast about me for something useful to do. It took some time, but at last I was wholly immersed in rewriting a piece for the Idler, a sketch of my time at school, which would provide me with a little pocket-change, when I heard the sitting room door open. I turned to see him entering fully dressed, dazed and blinking in the morning light. He looked miserable.

“Are you coming?” was all he said. It took me some few moments to recall--we had agreed to visit Mycroft. He needed his brother.

“Just let me get my hat,” I said. “Eat an egg, will you?”

When I returned he was standing over the breakfast table with a fork in his hand, chewing without enthusiasm. He dropped the fork and stepped back with visible relief, threw back a cupful of lukewarm tea as though it were cheap brandy, and caught up his cloak and my cane as we passed into the entryway. Outside, he fidgeted about on the pavement while I hailed us a hansom, pulling at his collar, taking out his pocket-watch, and putting it back in his waistcoat without looking at it.

In the cab, I seized his restless hand between both my own, and brought it to my lips. He looked startled; then a little of the fear left his eyes, and he drew my hands to his own lips in turn, with a sigh.

“So you’ve forgiven me?” he said.

“You’ve done nothing,” I said in surprise. He shook his head.

“Yesterday. I spoke to you abominably.”

“It’s already forgotten,” I answered, but it did me good to hear him say so. I still kept his hand in mine, and nestled it in my lap; the blessed privacy of carriage-travel allowed us some few minutes to be ordinary together, before the world burst in on us again. “May I ask you one question?”

He looked sideways at me, apprehensive, but nodded.

“You said that your parents are dead. When, and how? If it is not presumptuous to ask.”

“No.” He gave me a small smile, a silent thanks for the proffered escape. “It’s all right. My mother died of lock-jaw when I was ten years old. They brought me home from school, but they didn’t allow me to see her until she was in the casket. My father broke his neck in a riding accident fifteen years later. He was with a hunting party; they had been drinking, and the sun had nearly set, and he tried a jump his horse couldn’t manage in the dusk without firm guidance.”

He said all this without looking at me; his gaze was fixed on his lap, his expression ambiguous. I thought I might venture a little more. “Were you still at home then?”

“No. None of us were. Mycroft had just gained a position in the Ministry, and I had set up shop here, and was studying in the Museum at all hours.”

Again, he had left out Sherrinford Holmes. I let it pass. “Was it difficult for you?”

A minute’s silence. Then, “His death? I don’t know. Yes, I suppose it was. To be orphaned, even at twenty-five--but I didn’t think of that then. Mycroft handled the particulars; all that was required of me was to attend the funeral, and keep my temper with aunts and neighbors who meant to be sympathetic.”

His face showed no emotion, but his voice had dropped lower, and his fingers were picking and tugging at the hem of his coat. He was entrusting me with something significant. I dared one more question. “Mycroft handled the arrangements, and not Sherrinford? Even though he is the elder to you both?”

A flash of a glance, too quick to read, and then, “Mycroft has always been capable. Sherrinford takes after my father,” he said, and dropped his head back on the seat, and closed his eyes, and remained so until we pulled up before the august doors of the Diogenes. But his hand still lay in my lap, clinging to mine.

Mycroft met us at the door to his office. He is generally impassive to my eyes, though kind; but now his face showed concern. “Come in,” he said. “Sherlock, John--I’ll have tea sent down at once.” Mycroft and I have been on intimate speaking terms since an extraordinary conversation which began, “I hope you realize that I have long considered you family, in the truest sense,” and concluded with him asking me to tell him if I needed anything at all.

We sat down on the great, black, slippery mohair Chesterfield which reposes squat and immovable before the fireplace, with an ancient silver tea-service beside it. The rest of the room is walled floor to shadowy ceiling with bookshelves, adorned only by portrait of a stern-faced Holmes patriarch of the previous century hanging portentous behind the desk. The style of the place is solemn, the carpet dark and thick; the overall effect as imposing on first look, and as comforting on better acquaintance, as the man who rules over the room and from it the Empire.

“So,” Mycroft said, after fresh tea arrived, and we had each taken a steaming cup. He settled himself into a padded rolling chair moved up before the fire, with a sigh. “Something rather dire has occurred, disturbing you, Sherlock, to the extent that you came here without warning, and brought the Doctor for support; but it is not so distressing that you would refuse refreshments, or shout out the news of it on your arrival. I conclude there is no immediate threat. Shall I deduce further what is troubling you? Or shall you tell me yourself?”

Sherlock appeared to be struggling with himself. Mycroft waited without impatience, delicately stirring a third lump of sugar into his tea. Finally Sherlock looked up. “Sherrinford wrote to me. You must have known he’s--marrying. He’s asked us to the ceremony.”

Mycroft, as I have said, is difficult to read, but his brows rose at that, and he set the cup aside. “Has he? He’s cutting your invitation rather close. And you want to know--?”

“If you will be in attendance, to begin with.”

“No. They’ve not invited me. They understand the risks, I think, to someone in my position; and anyway, it is quite possible that their friends would not welcome me. I do not represent their best interests, officially, however benign my private attitude. But I dined with Sherrinford and Alfred last week, and we talked over their plans at some length; and I will send a gift, of course. I had thought of a dog, but they informed me with some unnecessary amusement that they have five already.”

Sherlock’s look was inexpressible. “You ate with them? Asked them to your suite?”

“Yes. Forgive me. I know you don’t like to hear about it.”

He shook his head without speaking, and frowned, and finally said, “How do they know about John?”

“My dear boy.” Mycroft sounded bemused. “The Doctor’s writing has made you both famous. You must realize that.”

“But surely--you don’t mean Sherrinford reads--?”

“All of John’s stories, yes. He’s subscribed to the Strand expressly for that purpose.”

I haven’t often seen Sherlock speechless. Mycroft studied him curiously before adding, “I confirmed your relationship to the Doctor when asked. I did not volunteer details, but I thought that much was forgivable.”

“Yes.” Sherlock looked as though he were in pain. “Thank you, Mycroft. I suppose--that is sufficient information. We can’t go to the wedding, of course. It wouldn’t be safe.”

“I suppose not,” Mycroft agreed. “And I will not make suggestions regarding the letter, but--”

“I’ll answer it,” Sherlock said, and stood. “John.”

I stood up, too, and offered Mycroft my hand.

“As ever, a pleasure,” he said, and shook it. He is never demonstrative, but since I came to truly know him I have never doubted his affection. I returned the handshake warmly. Setting aside all other good things I have gained since I took rooms at Baker Street, I am exceedingly glad to have found a brother in Mycroft Holmes.

He turned to my boy. “Take care of yourself,” he said, and shook his hand too. “Or at least let the Doctor do it.”

“Let’s not go home just yet,” was the first thing my boy said, when we’d gotten out-of-doors again.

“Then where shall we go?” I had some questions I wanted to ask him rather badly.

“On a ramble?”

I sighed. No talking, then, not about anything that mattered. But I could see how he needed the air; he was shadow-eyed, and grim around the lips. “All right.”

We walked about the city for the better part of two silent hours. The loneliness on his face grew no less, but he kept my hand tucked close into his elbow, and felt for it, and patted it, now and then. I thought it steadied him. He asked if we might lunch in a tavern; and when we finally arrived in our own rooms he set aside his coat and went directly to occupy himself at his tabletop laboratory. I am no student of chemistry, but I am an observer of Sherlock Holmes. It was quite clear that while he was not angry with me, he might be, if I insisted on breaking in on his thoughts before he had sifted through them and found what he needed; so I remained nearby, attending to the Journal and my accounts, and preparing several submissions for the Strand. Sometimes he needed me only to stay, a presence beyond the borders of the wild country within him, so that he would not get lost there.

When at last he turned to me, Mrs. Hudson had come and left with our dinner long ago; I had lit the lamps, and settled myself before the fire with a cigarette; thinking of how little I knew of the history of him. His eyes, when they found mine, were dazed; he looked as though he were waking from a trance. “John,” he said, sounding half-stunned, and then louder, “John. Are you all right?”

“All right,” I said. I cannot express the effect he has on my heart. “Come here?”

He came to me; sat on the bearskin rug at my feet, and took my ankle gently in his hand, and laid his head down in my lap. His hair has silver in it now. I buried my hand in the soft strands; drew my fingers through again and again, till his eyes grew clearer, his expression less otherworldly.

“Have I neglected you?” he said.

“No.” He always asks this, now, when he comes back, whether his mental absence has been hours or days. Sometimes I don’t think he knows how long he has been gone. “I’ve been fine, here. Working. Thinking, a bit. Reading the new Journal.”

“Tell me about it. Tell me something real.”

“All right,” I said, surprised. His lashes had fluttered closed as I continued to stroke his hair, his forehead, his dark brows, and I was struck with the need to bend and kiss each delicate eyelid in turn, and then the corners of his beautiful mouth, before I continued, “I was reading an article on the common prescription of lobelia in treating the asthmatic. Doctor Salter is suspicious of its popularity; he suggests cigarettes, or Indian hemp.” I went on talking to him, any ordinary nonsense that came into my head, until he was nearly asleep in my lap, the candle guttering on the table, the house fallen silent save for the sound of my voice; and then I said, “Sherlock. Come on, darling, come to bed.”

He raised his head, and looked at me. I had never spoken so to him; but he had never been quite so trusting with me before, and it had brought my heart to my lips. He took me in, and then his face contracted as though in pain, and he hid his face in my waist-coat like a child.

I walked him to bed, and held him there. He slept in my arms. I lay a long time watching the shades of night pass through the room.


	2. Chapter 2

We had scarcely blinked awake into the morning light when a knock sent us scrambling for our clothes: we had a client. We lock the door to the front stairs before we retire, so I was not afraid of discovery; still, we do like to appear marginally decent before visitors. My mustache looks ridiculous when uncombed, so I hung back to tidy myself while Holmes went down to greet them. When I joined them he was already elbows-deep in mystery. It was one of those he could manage from the sitting-room; in twenty minutes he had it all sorted, and was escorting his relieved client to the door with a glimmering glance of triumph over his shoulder, for my benefit. Two more clients followed in quick succession; then there was a summons from Lestrade, and a ride in a shilling hansom, and a series of forged documents at Scotland Yard which took us half an hour to survey. That was finished off with an animated lecture from my love on the science of handwriting, which none of us grasped whatsoever. He was pleased with himself, though, which was enough for me; especially as he fell quiet again in the cab going home; took dinner wordlessly, abstracted, and afterward smoked a pipe in silence, with a lowering storm in his grey eyes. When he sat down at his desk, and took out paper and pen, but did not write, only stared rigidly down at it, “I’ll just take a nap,” I said into the stillness, and left him to it. I would not bring him back to me quicker by fussing about.

***

I woke in bed from a dreamless sleep to his weight settling behind me, his arm sliding about my waist, his breath on the back of my neck.

“Hello,” I tried to say, my tongue thick in my mouth, but received only a deep sigh in return. I fought through gauzy layers of awakening, and at last managed to turn myself over, and look into his face.

His eyes were solemn. “I’ve written it,” he said, and I struggled to think what he could mean. “The letter,” he added, when I didn’t speak. “To my brother. Refusing the invitation. Perhaps--you could read it over for me? Tell me if it’s reasonable.”

“Reasonable, yes, of course,” I muttered, collecting my wits piecemeal. I leaned over to light the lamp; fumbled about the nightstand for my reading glasses. He propped himself up against the headboard and waited for me, his head bowed down, hair in mad disarray, proof proper of his mental state; he’d been running his hands through it without noticing. The letter lay in his lap, unsealed. I took it up. It wasn’t much to read: concise to the point of rudeness. The refusal was properly explained, the congratulations quite correct, but there was none of the warmth one would expect for a brother on the point of marriage. Laying it down, I attempted to muster my thoughts.

“It’s well written, of course,” I said at last. I was feeling my way. “But if it were a stranger’s letter, I’d say it was coolly phrased. I don’t mean to suggest it ought to be different. I assume he expects no more.”

“No. That is--I don’t know. John--” he turned at last to look at me; his gaze was fathoms deep. “Perhaps I had better explain what happened.”

“I’m at your service.” I didn’t move; I didn’t want to disturb whatever delicate sense of safety had formed around us. His voice, when he spoke, was steady and low.

“My father cast Sherrinford out of the house when he was twenty-two. He’d been discovered _in flagrante_ with the under-ostler. The boy was just nineteen. Sherrinford would not apologize; he professed to care for his partner in indiscretion. At that, Mycroft stood up on his behalf. My father was beside himself. When Sherrinford was sent off, Mycroft went with him. They were never asked home again, but to my knowledge they were not cut out of the estate--that would have created a scandal. And Father let Mycroft write to me. When I came here after school to try my luck, my brothers were waiting to receive me.” He gave a rueful smile.

“I had been very angry with them both, Mycroft for leaving us, Sherrinford for involving himself with a boy without position or protection. The servant could have been beggared had my father not decided to keep it all quiet, for our reputation’s sake. I found it hard to look Sherrinford in the face. Through his fault I had lost both my brothers and any sense of security. By that time I knew--I understood what Sherrinford had seen in the boy. I could see it too.” He broke off again and swallowed. I had not discovered my own nature until years later. I tried and failed to imagine having kept such a secret, in growing fear, at fifteen.

Beside me, he said into the quiet, “Still, he was my blood. I wanted to know him; so I ate with him in Mycroft’s rooms, or my own poor digs, a dozen times that year. Every time, he arrived drunk. He couldn’t hold a conversation. Halfway through the evening he would suggest we go with him to a tavern, or that I, specifically, accompany him to the Park to find some soldiers for our--use. He knew about me, you see. I don’t know how, but we brothers are all gifted with some measure of that observational capacity which Mycroft has worked into a diplomatic weapon, and I have crafted into a science. It was difficult--to see him like that; to realize he expected no more for me in future than his dissipated, lonely state. It disturbed me. I knew the tendency to self-abuse was in my blood too, thanks to our father.”

“You said he died drunk.”

“Yes. Once my brothers left he degenerated, and without anyone to help--” Here his voice failed him. I reached out at last and took his hand from his lap, and held and stroked it, until he could continue.

“Mycroft was different. He made efforts to develop himself. He was isolated, and controlled, and careful, and steady, and I thought I saw a way I could live. I determined to be like him; to be rational; to remain alone, and grow wise. I thought that was as much peace as I could hope for.”

He fondled and clung to my hand, my arm, but didn’t look at me.

“One night Sherrinford came to my door with a man, a stranger. He was almost incoherent--worse than usual. I was living in a sorry little hotel. There was no one to stop him coming up; the watchman fell asleep every night, and no one cared to wake him. Sherrinford found his way to my room even in his state, somehow, and knocked, and knocked, until I opened the door--it was the middle of the night. He asked me to give him and his companion a bed. I believe he only meant to rest. Anyway, he was too drunk to fuck.”

I started at the ugliness of the word in Sherlock’s soft voice. He pressed my hand.

“There was no love between them,” he said. “I know, because the stranger with my brother looked me over, head to foot. That look--I didn’t have the language, then, to name what he wanted to do, but I could see it.”

“He didn’t touch you?” Suddenly I was breathless.

He shook his head. “No, he didn’t. I took two shillings out of my purse; gave them to my brother for a cab-fare and a cot, and shut the door on him. I didn’t sleep till sunrise; but I didn’t repent it. To this day I don’t know if Sherrinford remembers. I don’t know whether he found a hansom to take him home, or whether they went to some hovel; or whether his companion robbed him and left him in the street.”

“But that was the last of it,” I said, because it was clear in his tone.

“I never saw him again,” he agreed, slowly. “He wrote to me, four times. I burned the letters unopened.”

“You told Mycroft what happened?”

“I told him enough. He wasn’t wholly shocked; he knew how far Sherrinford had drifted. I made it clear that there would be no more fraternal dinners. I knew Mycroft would go on seeing him, regardless, and writing to him, and worrying about him, until he was drowned in a ditch somewhere, or had his throat slit by a desperate ‘bit of scarlet’ from the godforsaken Park--forgive me.”

“It’s all right.” I knew what happened to soldiers who fell into indigence after the war. If I had not found a sympathetic flat-mate, I might have gone the same way. Sherlock had helped me; talked to me, and played for me when I could not sleep, and taken me to the Baths when my wounds ached so that I could barely walk. He’d asked me to observe him, and allowed me to write what I saw, which began my independence from my anaemic pension; and finally, when I was well enough, he begged my assistance in every adventure. It was everything I needed.

I glanced beside me, but his expression was wholly absent. “Did you hear that your brother had taken up with Cox?” I asked, when he remained silent.

He shook his head. “Mycroft has been as good as his word; he’s not mentioned Sherrinford since, except to tell me he’d moved to Islington. I assumed Mycroft had been seeing him occasionally--but--”

“Not like this,” I said. “Not having friendly, civilised dinners with him and his lover, talking over their future.”

“He’s planned a wedding,” he murmured. “He’s kept up a club membership, and a home, and a long-term liaison. I don’t understand.”

“He must have given up drink.”

“Or perhaps Cox is as bad.”

“Mycroft would know.”

“Yes.” There was no expression in his voice; but the lines of his face showed bewildered exhaustion. Years, I thought, years without word of his brother.

“My dear boy,” I said. “You have been through Hell.”

He looked up, startled; I am rarely profane, but nothing else would express my feelings at that moment. I held out my arms to him, and he came to me; knelt around my legs, and took my face in his hands, and kissed me, hard and deep.

“I thought--” he said, when he broke away and rested his forehead on mine. “I thought I would be always alone.”

“I thought I was ruined at Maiwand.”

“I thought all our kind wanted only a night’s distraction, except for me.”

“You are a lifelong distraction,” I said. It was an absurd rejoinder, but he let out a laugh that was nearly a sob, and took my face in his hands again. After that there was no talking.

***

The day of his brother’s wedding dawned early, cold and bright and blue. I woke alone; Sherlock must have gone downstairs sometime after I’d begun dreaming. He was often too restless to sleep, and too kind to disturb my hard-won rest. I listened, and heard a melancholy violin singing below.

I found him by the window in his dressing gown, wild, remote and beautiful in the morning light, swaying, and playing his heart into the air.

Our breakfast came and was after cleared away without disturbing his reverie, though he shifted at last from his wandering songs into a fiercer, wilder melody, something like a battle in the offing. I leaned back in my chair, and closed my eyes, and dreamed the fight with him, until at last he finished up with a sudden, decisive sound and an audible “Ha!” I sat up, to see him lay down the instrument, and turn about for his hat.

“Where are you going?”

“To send a letter. And then to breakfast.”

“It’s nearly noon.”

“To lunch, then. Coming?”

I caught up my cane as he bent and scribbled out a missive upon his desk, and did up my collar as he sealed it. We went down together. At the foot of the stairs, he rung for Billy and ordered him to have the note over to the Diogenes at once. I minded my business, an occupation I am well practiced in. When he wanted me to know, I’d know.

Over lunch he behaved like his ordinary self, but consciously; as though he were determined to amuse us both. I allowed myself to be amused, half in relief that he was finally with me, half in homage to the effort he was making: I had known the day would be difficult. But he kept me out with him for hours, between food, and banter, and drinks, and a stop over at a book shop, and a side excursion for a fresh pig’s liver, on the way home--I thought it better not to inquire into that. When we arrived in Baker Street again the sun had sunk halfway toward the horizon. The city was bathed in light.

Mrs. Hudson stopped us in the entry. “This came,” she said, holding up another letter. He took the envelope from her and disappeared up the stairs without a backward look.

She turned to me. “Is he all right?” Our landlady is the soul of loyalty, but not uninquisitive.

“I think so. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“I’ll plan a pudding for supper,” was all her answer, but she patted my arm before she turned back to the kitchen, and I felt obscurely comforted.

When I reached our sitting room he stood over the mantle, staring into the hearth. The note lay open on the table.

“He says Sherrinford has been sober for years,” he said, without turning. “Before he met Cox. Mycroft thinks the change may be permanent, as Cox also lives dry.”

“Oh.” I stared at the firm line of his shoulders, the bowed head, and tried to grasp this. “Oh, that’s--well. That’s significant.”

“Yes,” he murmured. For once he did not sound abstracted, or remote, at all; he sounded as though he were very much present, and waiting for something.

“Do you believe it?”

“Yes.”

“So do I.” Mycroft is not unobservant of his brothers, nor is he a bearer of false hope. “Why didn’t he tell you before?”

“Maybe he felt himself bound to wait. Maybe he feared Sherrinford would fall to drink again.” His voice was growing thick. He turned: looked at me with dark, wet eyes. My heart jolted at the sight--he never weeps. “Or maybe he thought I would ask, if I wanted to know.”

“Now you know,” I said. He was facing me without pretense, angry and grieving, so I looked back and let him see me loving him, and said, “What do you want to do?”

“To do?" I’d surprised him; he took a step toward me. “What can I do?”

“You could let it be, give it time. Or you could write to him. Or you could go and see him.” I stepped to meet him; touched his jaw, which worked under my hand; brushed my fingers over his soft, damp cheeks, to catch the tears. When he still didn’t speak, I asked, “What time is the wedding? Seven o’clock?”

“We can’t go,” he said, almost inaudibly. “I can’t put you in danger.”

“But you want to go. To see them. You could get a grasp on all this if you see them.” It was clear, now. “Go without me.”

His gaze flashed up to mine. “You said together, or not at all.”

“I was wrong. Forgive me. Alone, you could disguise yourself and attend with less risk.”

“Do you mean it?” He sounded disbelieving, but a gleam came suddenly into his expression; and I knew I’d struck on truth.

“You have enough time. Write him now--tell him you’ve changed your mind. Get yourself made up. You can change at the club if you want. Did you keep the invitation?” He nodded. “Bring it: the doorman won’t care what you look like if you have it.”

He drew a breath. “John. My John.” Suddenly he let go my hand, caught me about the waist and spun me round in a dance step for which I was not at all prepared. Then he kissed me soundly; and then he let me go, and went for pen and paper; and I sat down to collect myself. I will never, in a hundred years, comprehend the whole of him: he is endless wonder.

The letter sent, he went to his room. After some little time, during which I tidied my desk and hoped devoutly that this would not end in disaster, there entered an elegant, but nervous-looking gentleman with a stooped posture, black gloves, a neat little beard, and a high silk hat. Under the shadow of its brim familiar eyes shone with emotion. He bent over my chair and gave me a kiss, made strange by the false whiskers’ bristly intrusion, but all he said was, “Let me find you in my bed when I come home.”

“You will,” I promised, and sighed through the rising _Be careful_ I would not give voice to. I knew that he knew.

Through the long evening, I kept a kind of vigil. I ate, and wrote, and read, and sat dreaming, wondering how he was, what he was doing, if anyone had taken notice of him, or if he stood alone in a corner. But as the clock struck half nine I went into his room; knowing that whether the night went well or ill he would want me. I undressed in the shadows, amid the comfortable clutter of his chamber, the scent of his tobacco and the cedar chips in his costume-chest. I stirred up the fire; his hands and feet were always cold. I set his slippers beside it to warm, and hung his soft old night-cap on the bedpost; blew out the candle, and tucked myself beneath the coverlet, thinking I surely would not sleep.

All at once I was waking to him watching me. The fire had died down, the shadows changed; and he was there beside me, lying propped up on his elbow. His expression was a study in conflicting emotions.

“Welcome home,” I whispered. All at once his whole face shifted into tenderness. He smiled.

“Thank you. Are you all right?”

“All right,” I said, and slid nearer, to tuck myself beneath his arm, and rest my head under his chin, and feel him breathe. For some minutes we lay silently. I could smell the smoke of someone’s cigar on him, and a little of his own sweet cologne. I buried my nose in the soft hollow of his neck, to chase the scent, and he laughed, and kissed the shell of my ear. His lips were cold; he had not been in long.

“What was it like?” I asked, finally, pulling away to see his expression. The complicated look passed over his face again.

“It was strange,” he said frankly. “I didn’t like half of them.”

“Were they rude?”

“Not at all. Just like any crowd--unthinking; boisterous and a little crass. But some of them were interesting; and some were kind to me.”

“Should I be jealous?”

He laughed. “They weren’t _too_ kind. I didn’t dance with anyone, if that’s what you mean.”

“And the wedding itself?”

“It was--a wedding. Nothing unusual.”

“Apart from the grooms?”

“Apart from that.” A little frown formed between his eyes. Here lay the crux of the matter.

“How did they seem? Cox, and your brother? How were they together?”

“They seemed happy,” he said. His voice grew softer and slower. “They looked well. Cox was very gracious to me.”

“You spoke to them?” I pushed myself up on my elbow, the better to see him. He blinked, and hesitated, searching for words; met my eyes again.

“I think they’ll be all right,” he said. “My brother looked--I hadn’t seen him like that. He’s changed. I might go to see them. They asked me up to the house.”

“Just you?” I said.

My disappointment must have been evident, because he pulled me back into him, suddenly, putting his nose in my hair, and said, “No, John, of course not. Not if you’d like to come along. I didn’t know if you would--perhaps you’ve had enough mad Holmeses.”

“Never,” I vowed, into his chest, and his arms tightened around me.

We lay like that a long while, wrapped in shadows. I had begun to drift toward sleep amid the heat of him, when I heard him whisper, “I wish I could.”

“Could what?” I murmured back.

“Marry you.”

All at once I was wide awake. I pushed up out of his arms to look down at his startled, sleepy face, faintly rosy in the fire’s dying light.

“Marry me?” I demanded.

“I--well, yes, I--”

He was at a loss for words, but I saw the truth in his face; he’d meant it just as he said it, and all at once I felt like weeping. “What, at the club, with a priest, and a crowd?” I asked, more softly; laid a hand on his cheek.

“No, just--here, somehow,” he said, after an interminable moment. “At home.”

“Just us.”

“Yes.”

“Then do it.” I stroked his hair, his face, and felt myself alive, with all my wounds--my heart running fast, my lungs taking in air. I felt myself quite sure of one good thing, and said, with my hand on his pulse, to feel it racing, “Marry me.”

***

The week that went by after was a continual revelation; nothing was different, and yet I felt new. I wished with all my heart that someone, anyone could know how I loved him. That I was his. And yet I supposed that all England knew it, really. They knew he was the best and brightest thing in the world to me. They had read everything I’d written for him. It was only convention that kept them from understanding it.

We’d promised each other a week, each to find a suitable token for the other. Something with which to promise each other our intent. I made a quiet trip to the bookseller on the Square; I needed a copy of the prayer book, for we’d agreed that we would have no priest. Neither of us wanted to ask in a stranger in, even if we could find a sympathetic one.

I was put to some trouble behaving sensibly on the day we’d chosen. We had agreed to wait until everyone else was abed; a practical measure, to make us safe from everyday interruptions, or (God forbid) the sudden interference of an actual case; but the hours stretched on before us. I suppose I was fidgeting, because Sherlock at last sprung up from the sofa, where I thought he’d fallen asleep, and said, “This won’t do at all. Come on!”

So we went off on what amounted to a day-tour of the city. He took me to walk along the Avenue, and bought hot chocolate for us to drink, in a little place I’d never seen, full of Greeks, who laughed at my attempts to speak the language. He ushered me into St. James, and, underdressed as we were, bought tickets for whatever was playing on stage that very minute--it turned out to be a rather stunning recital by Paderewski, the new sensation. He took me to the Baths, and he was unspeakably beautiful there. The relaxation he’d intended was buried in a rush of pure unmitigated joy at his existence. He caught my eye as we settled down in the cooling room. Whatever he saw in my look brought an answering expression of embarrassed delight to his unfairly lovely face. I buried my face in the towels, instead of saying what I wished, while he did the same, with a deep, quiet laugh.

But home at last, and well fed at Mrs. Hudson’s hands, and having whiled away the evening with work and music until we were certain the household had fallen into blessed sleep, I found myself very nearly afraid. The enormity of the thing settled on me. For a minute I could only stare at him, leaning on the mantelpiece, looking like an angel, till he said soberly, “Shall we?”

I went to my room to get out the little prayer book, and the token I had bought for him. With them in my hands found I had to sit down. I have loved a few times, and lost every one; traveled a wide world, with very little comfort in it. I have known my share of good times, along with trouble, but never a happiness like this. And now I was about to make vows to him. I would never do anything again, I thought, that meant so much.

He was waiting for me, when I returned, still standing by the fire. I could see he was nervous, too. I held up the book. “I thought I’d read a bit of the service proper, if I’m to be our priest,” I said. As I’d hoped, his expression dissolved into pure amusement.

“Ridiculous man,” he said, very quietly, and held out his hands to me. I met him there on the hearth-rug; lifted the book and began.

“Dearly beloved,” I read, “we are gathered here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation”--Here Sherlock raised his brows, and I gestured between the two of us; if I could serve as our priest, we could be our own congregation, surely. He nodded, conceding the point, so I went on--“gathered to join together these men in holy matrimony. If either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together, do now confess it.” It ought to have been funny, given the multiplicity of reasons we might not, lawfully. I expected a sparkle of derision from him at the line, but his gaze remained wholly solemn and true.

“I know of no impediment,” he said. “I love you: that will serve for our law.”

“Then let us exchange the tokens of our good faith,” I said, when I had got my voice back, and I produced out of my pocket the little gold sovereign I’d had made into a fob. “Give me your watch?”

He drew it out, and laid it in my palm, with a questioning look.

“If this was my last coin, it would be yours,” I said, holding out the sovereign for him to see. “All I have, and all I am is yours, and none other’s, from now until the day you die.” I hooked the little coin to his watch chain, with a feeling of triumph: I had said it; exposed my heart entirely, without a falter.

When I looked up, great tears stood in his eyes. I was caught in his gaze, bright in the firelight, till the tears overflowed and spilled down his face. I said, hoarse, “Sherlock.” He wiped quickly at his eyes; took the watch from me, and touched the coin with one finger; put it away in his waistcoat pocket, reverent. Then he reached into his other pocket, and brought out a ring.

A sound escaped me. I had not expected that, from him. He smiled a little, watching me, and turned it in his lovely fingers for me to look at. It was gold, gleaming but plain, till I glimpsed inside the band what appeared to be a miniature skull inlaid.

“Let me see,” I said. He laughed, and held it up just before my eyes, turning it again. Within, where it would remain a secret known only to the wearer, was engraved a message in pictographic code. Two white enamel hands sheltered a heart between them. After them was carved the word _till,_ and then came the tiny, gap-eyed skull.

“Two hands,” he said, watching me, “one heart, till death.” He paused.

“Till death do us part.” I could not speak steadily.

“It’s very old,” he said. “Seventeenth century.”

“It’s perfect.” He had gotten me a ring, and such a ring. “It’s so like you.”

A smile lit his face, and was gone, leaving behind an expression of such deep intent that I could no longer look at him. I dropped my gaze to my hand as he took it up in his gentle one, and slid the cool, heavy little ring onto my smallest finger.

“Till death,” he repeated, and kissed the finger slowly. Then he took the book from my hand, and read out, “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow--although they were yours already. So we are joined together, and I dare any man to put us asunder.” And he looked up at me then, and said, “I believe that makes us husbands.”

***

The next day a great goose arrived fresh from the butcher’s; and a bottle of very fine aged port followed from Mycroft’s address. I don’t know when Sherlock told him; but the proof of his approval was surprisingly good to see.

A formal invitation to Sherrinford and Cox’s place outside the city limits came later, and we actually spent an afternoon there. Sherrinford looks like Sherlock--tall, slender, with unruly dark hair and a keen expression, but his face is bewhiskered and weary, and his sharp green eyes nothing like my love’s dreaming ones. Alfred Cox is a burly ginger, with dimples and a wry mouth. While they were both very polite in their welcome, at first we none of us knew what to say to one another. Sherrinford seems mostly business-minded, Cox quite political in his passions; and we were rather stuck, until the conversation turned to music.

After a half-hour’s lively debate over composers past and present, and the merits of various instruments (for which I stayed silent, but happily), Cox quite unexpectedly fetched a beautiful little Spanish guitar from another room, and played for us a while. Sherrinford watched with a softness which better recommended them both to me, since I have often watched Holmes at his violin with just the same feeling. After, I remembered Mycroft had mentioned they kept dogs, and asked to see the kennels; and that removed any remaining stiffness between us. Sherlock raced and tussled the dogs about, and tested their training, and asked after all the details of their puppyhood, and Sherrinford answered him with a light in his eye which was very good to see. Sherlock ended up coming away in a pair of Sherrinford’s trousers, having muddied his irreparably in the kennel-yard. As we boarded the train-carriage toward London in the gloaming, he was smiling to himself. I believe we will visit them again.

Sherlock has promised to take me to the old Holmes estate, some day, though it was sold to friends of friends after their father’s death--”No need for a house of that size,” he said, dryly, “nor lands, since any future young Holmeses are now quite out of the question. But we could take a tour of it. I’m glad to have grown up with the glades and meadows about us, and the wild things, and the great library, and the land rolling down toward the river; but I much prefer London, and our own home.”

“And so do I,” I said. But the truth is that I will be at home wherever he is, for better or for worse, as long as we live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enormous thanks to my betas Jasmine @darlingdetectives and Azuki @marathecactapus. As always, you helped my story sing.
> 
> The antique ring Holmes gives Watson actually exists, as described, except that there are two hearts entertwined between the hands.
> 
> I'd like to acknowledge that the use of first/last names was complicated, here. I can't imagine Watson, in love with Holmes, would refer to him formally in his private thoughts or writings, except occasionally out of habit. It's unusual in a Victorian-era fic, but it is rather satisfying to write. First names were also used among family, and often adopted when someone married in; so Mycroft calling Watson John, as well, shows strong support of his relationship with Holmes.
> 
> Queer clubs, holding queer weddings, with the blessing of priests, reads like a fic-writer's wishful invention. But it is actually a matter of historical record. From a tumblr post by @weeesi: "Both London and the Culture of Homosexuality AND Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century talked about this. To quote from Strangers: '…marriages continued to be a common expression of love and sociality. A surprising number of priests and vicars were prepared to perform marriages for homosexual men or lesbians, and there were also many private arrangements. […] There is evidence from late 19th-century America, Britain, France and Germany of hotels rented for weddings, male brides in gorgeous gowns, exotic honeymoons (sometimes ruined by blackmailers) and bridal bouquets kept under glass in front parlours. These events were the feast days of small communities.'"
> 
> This is Holmes and Watson's story, but it's also Sherrinford's. The struggle to find your balance after a world-shattering event, like losing home, a parent and a first love at one blow, is a long and hard one; and thinking well of yourself, and choosing your own safety and happiness, is an act of great bravery. It can take time to find the courage. To anyone who relates to Sherrinford's side of the story: I honor you. If you've already found your own life or if you're still reeling, I believe in you. 
> 
> Sherrinford, as the eldest son, would have inherited the bulk of the family estate on their father's death (which is why some Holmesians have postulated his existence; neither Mycroft nor Sherlock seem to live like heirs). In my headcanon, he was already sober at their father's death, but that reinforced his resolve. He was emotionally steady enough by then to receive the influx of resources with grace.
> 
> I read Mycroft as asexual, and much more content alone than Holmes could ever have been. I think that as long as Sherlock and Sherrinford are alive and well and nearby, he is happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I looked at this illustration while writing this: http://6utton.tumblr.com/post/156327754466/heres-my-contribution-to-the-new-issue-of-the


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